JB

"Hey, you guys in 1990. In the year 2020, you will be talking about this machine on the internet with people all over the worl- what's an internet? It is kinda like a BBS only- no, the long distance costs won't kill it because- look, it doesn't work like th- no, we don't have flying cars in the future!"

I lie: Gary Kildall was copying TOPS-10, not RT-11. / was used to denote switches in TOPS-10, and hence not available for paths. I can't seem to edit my post.

"I once complained I had no shoes, til I met a man who had no feet."

CP/M borrowed from DEC's syntax(if I recall, Digital Research was copying RT-11), which DOES precede MULTICS. I readily concede the URL format is UNIX-inspired. Just correcting the "Gates invented a new standard to be contrary" record. He used the CP/M standard for compatibility. I suspect Kildall did it for familiarity, as I don't believe CP/M was compatible with RT-11 except in syntax. I admit to being surprised MS's internet browsers will autocorrect slashes in URLs. That is a new trick on me.

From Gates? MS-DOS uses backslashes because CP/M used them. Digital Research used backslashes because that was how DEC did it. Forward-slash is actually the johnny-come-lately diffrent-for-the-sake-of-it convention.

Hooray!

But then how would we keep our coffee warm?

I was thinking the same thing. I'm a-maze-d.

Very nice!

You know what would really make that C64 Pi mod shine? If he'd installed a 99/4a emulator instead of a C64 one. Be a nice upgrade. Then he'd just be stuck with that ugly brown case that looks like someone sat on a loaf of bread. In seriousness, I've seen a 4a-Pi mod that was cleaner than the one above. But the C64 has an advantage in that there's a lot of custom parts to do this readily available, because of the much larger fanbase. With the TI you're making things up as you go, and you won't get a super-clean install if you aren't focused on that from the start.

My understanding(as someone who was rather small when all this was happening) is that TI didn't actually WANT people developing software that took full advantage of the system. Not unless they paid TI for a developer's kit, and then paid TI again to manfacture the GROMs they would need for a cartridge. It was a good ways into the system's life before the platform was opened up with Extended BASIC and Editor/Assembler. Basically, TI wanted a "walled garden" where they were the sole publisher of software, and they made money on both hardware and software sales. This practice was terribly offensive to most software developers. And even after the platform was opened up they didn't really trust TI not to close it back down, like with a system revision that disabled booting from ROM-only cartridges... Forty years later... TI always was ahead of their time.

I'm gonna spend my entire check on lotto tickets. This seems the most fiscally sound investment. With 1200 tickets, I can't lose!

To summarize the thread: everything.

So the problem is, in fact, that Norton is broken and blocking sites for no reason? Good to know.

SORT OF. DVI connectors CAN carry analog video signals, but aren't required to. If they don't, then a simple plug-and-cable adapter won't get you anything and you need a box of electronics just like you would for HDMI. The digital signal portion of DVI, however, is virtually always there and is almost identical to HDMI(HDMI being built atop DVI, with intercompatibility as a goal initially), so converters for DVI->HDMI are always cheap plug-and-cable affairs.

I kinda love the idea of putting modern expansions in speech synthesizer casings. Just for the confusion as people look at your TI and try to figure out why it has four speech synthesizers attached and nothing else.

*inhales deeply* HEY EVERYONE, GDMIKE IS GARDENING INSTEAD OF PROGRAMMING!!!

FCC regulations at the time where much stricter than they are now. I'd wager the 4a is pretty quiet by modern standards.

"Expensive"

I've considered it. Main argument against right now is that my beige unit doesn't work completely right. It boots and everything seems to respond, but there's an endless waterfall noise coming out of the sound chip. I've not had the right combination of time and ambition to debug it.

I really like how the beige units look, though a power LED would be nice. I think it has a "futuristic" style that the black units lack.

I've been using the term "MAMESS" to refer to post-merger MESS.

It is eBay. There's two classifications for anything interesting, "rare" and "untested"

Also the absolute best Missile Command clone.

Awww, you know there was only one computer made in the 80s. It HAS to be for the Commodore.